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Pssst. Have you heard the one about the assistant university professor and the Sichuan TV reporter? No? Oh good.

This beautiful tale of censorship, government sycophants and hilarious emasculation comes to you courtesy of a massive weibo (microblogging) row between diminutive reporter Zhou Yan and academic lightweight Wu Danhong.

It all started when Zhou took offence at Wu’s suggestion that her fellow Sichuans were making a lot of fuss about nothing after they mobilised mass protests on the streets of Shifang.

The crowds were protesting – successfully in the end – against the building of a new molybdenum copper plant in the area on environmental and public health grounds. Wu got on his high horse and claimed that a bit of molybdenum never hurt anyone.

So they agreed to settle their differences in Beijing’s Chaoyang Park last Friday.

What ensued, as these images and transcript on Beijing Cream reveal, was a fair bit of shouting, some swearing and an unfathomably pathetic display of capitulation by Wu.

Now I know university professors are not the most athletic bunch of human beings in the world, but quite how Wu managed to end up on the ground at the feet of the sub-five foot Zhou is anyone’s guess.

Mine is that he was trying to use the event, and any ensuing notoriety it managed to attract online, to score a moral victory for the Party and undermine his liberal opponents by making them appear like a crazed mob.

Lending credence to this theory is his attempt in the days since to exaggerate his injuries from the ‘fight’ and even bizarrely to accuse well-known artist/dissident Ai Weiwei of joining in (Ai was apparently passing by chance at the time).

Wu is often referred to as a member of the “50 cent party”, a pejorative term for online commentators and talking heads who are apparently paid five mao (50 cents) by the authorities per every pro-government post.

They’re cheerleaders for the Communist Party, effectively, and help to sway and manipulate online opinion in usually a very obvious way.

Basically, he’s a right nob and had it coming. It’s just a shame that Zhou – who predictably got banged up soon after – didn’t bring a baseball bat with her.